1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive apparatus for recording and/or reproducing an information signal on a disk-type recording medium by moving an optical pickup in a radial direction relative to the disk-type recording medium, and also relates to a disk recording and/or reproducing apparatus such as personal computers and digital video recorders including the disk drive apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an optical disk such as a CD (Compact Disk) and a DVD (Digital Versatile Disk), and a magnetooptical disk such as a MD (Mini Disk) are widely known as a disk-type recording medium, and there are various disk drive apparatus for recording and reproducing an information signal using the optical disks.
The followings are examples of the disk drive apparatus including various mechanisms in replacing the optical disks described below. One example is a disk drive apparatus in which a cover or flap provided with a chassis is opened upward and the optical disk is directly loaded on a turntable through an opening portion thereof. Another example is a disk drive apparatus in which a disk tray containing the optical disk is transferred inside and outside of the apparatus chassis in a horizontal direction, and the optical disk is automatically loaded on the turntable provided inside the apparatus chassis when the disk tray is drawn into the apparatus chassis. Still another example is a disk drive apparatus in which the turntable is provided with the disk tray in a unified manner, and the optical disk is directly loaded on the turntable when the disk tray is drawn outside of the apparatus chassis.
However, in the above-described disk drive apparatus, an operator has to open and close the cover or flap of the apparatus chassis, draw in and out the disk tray, and load the optical disk on the turntable.
There is provided a slot-in type disk drive apparatus in which a disk insertion slot in a front face of the apparatus chassis. With this apparatus the operator only has to insert the optical disk from the disk insertion slot, and the optical disk is automatically drawn inside the apparatus chassis and loaded on the turntable. There are provide various types of the slot-in type disk drive apparatus as described below. One example is a slot-in type disk drive apparatus having a roller unit in which transferring rollers for transferring the inserted optical disk by holding a main surface or an outer circumference of the disk between the rollers and support projections that faces the vicinity of the disk insertion slot. Another example is a slot-in type disk drive apparatus having a swinger unit formed with combined thin plate swingers, and the optical disk is moved and transferred as the swinger unit to a disk loading portion.
In the slot-in type disk drive apparatuses, the latter slot-in type disk drive apparatus using the swinger unit is more suitable for reducing the thickness of the disk drive apparatus than the former slot-in type disk drive apparatus having a roller unit since the swinger unit is formed by combining the thin sheet metals.
In addition, such a disk drive apparatus is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-190645 as an example of the disk drive apparatus in the related art. The disk drive apparatus described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-190645 includes a chassis, a disk loading portion, a disk rotational drive mechanism, an optical pickup and a pickup transfer mechanism. The chassis is configured such that a disk insertion slot through which an optical disk is inserted and/or ejected is provided in a front face. The disk loading portion is configured such that the optical disk inserted from the disk insertion slot to the inside of the chassis is loaded thereon. The disk rotational drive mechanism is configured to rotationally drive the optical disk loaded on the disk loading portion. The optical pickup is configured to write in and/or read out a signal on the optical disk rotationally driven by the disk rotational drive mechanism. The pickup transfer mechanism is configured to operate to transfer the optical pickup over inner and outer circumferences of the optical disk. Further, the disk drive apparatus of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-190645 includes a base unit in which those described in the above are provided integrally into the base and a disk transfer mechanism that transfers the optical disk between a disk insertion-ejection position where the optical disk is inserted and ejected from the disk insertion slot and a disk loading position where the optical disk is loaded on the disk loading portion. The disk transfer mechanism has a plurality of support members that are operated to move between a main surface of the chassis facing the disk loading portion and a main surface of the optical disk inserted from the disk insertion slot, and the plurality of support members have fitting contact portions that can fittingly contact with an outer circumferential portion of the optical disk inserted from the disk insertion slot. The outer circumferential portion of the optical disk is sandwiched by those fitting contact portions, so that at least one operation of a loading operation, a centering operation and an eject operation of ejecting the optical disk from the disk insertion slot to the outside of the chassis.
According to the disk drive apparatus having such configuration, a further reduction in size, weight and thickness of the whole apparatus can be achieved as the slot-in type disk drive apparatus since the loading operation, centering operation or eject operation of the optical disk can stably and appropriately be performed by the plurality of support members without having an effect from a space between the base and the optical disk that is inserted from the disk insertion slot.
Furthermore, there is also such a disk drive apparatus described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-117604 as another example of the disk drive apparatus in the related art. The disk drive apparatus described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-117604 includes a spindle motor, a base body, a pair of slide members, a first swinger, and a second swinger. The spindle motor rotationally drives the disk. The base body supports the spindle motor. The pair of slide members are extended on both sides of the base body to support the base body, and raise and lower the base body in a direction vertical to the disk surface by reciprocally moving in a direction of the disk surface. The first swinger swings in the direction of the disk surface in order to draw the center of the disk supplied by the operator up to a center position of the spindle motor. The second swinger swings in the direction of the disk surface in order to eject the center of the disk from the center position of the spindle motor to a position where the operator removes the disk. The pair of slide members include a first slide member with which the first swinger performs a drawing operation and a second slide member with which the second swinger performs an eject operation, and the spindle motor, base body, first slide member, second slide member, first swinger and second swinger are disposed on one side of the disk.
According to the disk apparatus having such configuration, a width of the disk apparatus can be reduced since this disk apparatus is a disk transfer unit without having a roller.
Meanwhile, a disk drive apparatus for IT (Information Technology) is generally installed on a drive bay provided in a device chassis of a host device such as a personal computer (hereinafter, referred to as “PC”) and a game machine, so that the apparatus is integrally used with the host device by having drive power supplied from the host device side. As increasing a demand for further reduction in size, weight and thickness in a portable host device among such host devices such as a notebook-type PC, the disk drive apparatus mounted on such host device may also be expected to be reduced in size, weight and thickness.
Further, as increasing a demand for the thinness and compactness in a DVD recording-reproducing apparatus (digital video disk recorder) representing one specific example of the information recording and/or reproducing apparatus and an AV (Audio Visual) device such as a TV (Television), the built-in disk drive apparatus may also be expected to be reduced in size, weight and thickness.
There are provided various optical disks having different outer diameters such as an optical disk having 8 cm diameter used for a camera built-in type video disk recorder (hereinafter, referred to as “camcorder”) and the like, in addition to a standard type optical disk having 12 cm diameter, for example, depending on the standard and recording capacity of the optical disk. Due to the circumstances, the disk drive apparatus mounted on the PC, disk recording-reproducing apparatus for AV, and the like may be required to deal with any size of the optical disk.
In either cases of the above-mentioned disk drive apparatuses described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-117645 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-117604, for example, an internal mechanism of the disk drive apparatus starts moving such that the optical disk is drawn into the inside of the apparatus chassis when the operator inserts the optical disk into the apparatus chassis to a certain extent of depth. Then, the optical pickup is operated after the optical disk is loaded on the turntable, so that the information signal is recorded and reproduced.
However, in the thin slot-in type disk drive apparatus, a sufficiently large space in a height direction may be difficult to obtain between a surface of the optical disk loaded on the turntable and structural components of the mechanism used for drawing the optical disk, for example, due to a demand for the thinness. In contrast, further narrower (more strictly) space may be demanded for the thin slot-in type disk drive apparatus, and an amount of space change caused by variability in the component accuracy may have to strictly be controlled. If there is little space between the optical disk and the mechanism components, an abnormal sound may be generated and the surface of the optical disk may be damaged since the rotationally driven optical disk and the mechanism components come into contact in the height direction.
In addition, the thin slot-in type disk drive apparatus may depend largely on the accuracy of the components in order to achieve the thinness according to the structure of the apparatus. As a result, the space between the disk height and the surrounding components may not be secured as planned in a design scheme since the space between the optical disk after being loaded on the turntable and the surrounding components becomes too narrow in the disk drive apparatus which is assembled using components having a dimension with threshold limit.